[TowerTalk] elevated short vertical dipole or quarterwavemonopole?

[Jamesnf at aol.com]

Jim,

You seem to be assuming you can't have an acceptable radial field in a suburban backyard.  I'm in suburban Chicago and had an available space of only 60' x 40' for my radial field.  I centered a Hygain Hytower in the middle of the space and installed 60 evenly spaced radials varying from 20'(0.15 wl) to 35' (0.25 wl)as space permitted.  On 7Mhz, the Hytower functions as a full size quarter wave which would be within your height limit.  Despite my smaller than optimum radial field, references I checked said I should have been down only about 1db from a full 120 0.4 wl radial field.  I had no way to measure this, but I can tell you it played very well on 7Mhz.  Don't assume you can't do a radial field that performs well without own acres of salt marsh.  

Jim W9TM